children of the stars
by words-with-dragons
Summary: There is so much more of the universe, and so many more children of the stars, than we can ever know. / Sidefic and companion oneshots to my "The Space Between Stars"'verse. Some ships that will be featured: Shallura, Antok/Kolivan, Thulaz, Klance, and many others. Wildly AU. Look to TSBS for more info
1. dancing with our hands tied (kolivantok)

**children of the stars**

i: dancing with our hands tied

 **Summary:** A brief look at Antok and Kolivan, through the years. T+ for gore, and well, war

::::

Kolivan is young and angry, when he joins the Blade of Mamora. Fury burns white hot in his chest, at everything: the lies of the empire, its useless mantra, its cold metallic swords and the tangy taste of blood in his mouth.

(The first thought shakes loose when he's stationed away on a forest moon to oversee a stationary prison. No one tells him until he gets there that the prison is mostly full of Galra. Half-breeds mostly, _Kyrak_ s, rebels and traitors, but still. They don't stop rattling even when he lays down to rest. Black and blue marks, tainted with purple, stain the backs of his eyelids.)

Antok is young and boisterous, an older brother already joined up with the Blades, and a younger one enlisting beside him. Their parents rebel fire burns hot and bright in his chest, Blades who broke code and fell in love and were forgiven because children equals new soldiers for the cause.

(He loses them all two years in, in bombings and stabbings and torture chambers. There are no bodies to bury. The only Blade that survives is his older brother's, and although the metal is mostly indestructible save for an explosion, he spends hours trying to etch in all their names into the knife.)

Antok is sent to the prison as a spy, Kolivan as a stationed guard. They look after the same block of cells, keyed up on a rotation. Only a few of their prisoners are Galra. Antok sees no one he recognizes, but that doesn't mean none of them are here for being Blades. Kolivan's shaky breathing transforms into disgust and then into pity and then into curiosity. What does his Empire do with traitors? Why does his Empire create traitors?

He does not trust Antok.

(He doesn't need to.)

::::

"This is your first station?"

Kolivan's gaze snaps up. Guard rotations are usually silent. Silent still is Antok beside him. They're the primary guards of this cellblock, but others come to stand watch and give them some relief from the scraping claws of the aliens behind bars, when they're not let out into the courtyard or fighting pits or mess hall, or such.

The Galra who spoke is smaller and skinnier, with ridges along their smooth head. A small _Tzarak_ then, likely even fresher out of training than he is. Kolivan knows he could take them in a fight, but caste occasionally beats out strength, and to his annoyance, this is one of those times. It would be seen as incredibly rude for him to refuse an answer to a _Tzarak_ 's question.

"Yes," Kolivan says stiffly.

"This is mine too." They peer around Kolivan's shoulder to look at Antok, who smiles. "And yours?"

"My twentieth."

The _Tzarak_ 's heavy brow knits together. "You cannot be that much older than me."

"I graduated a few years ago and have been shuffled around quite often."

"Clearly," the Tzarak says, and then lets them off for shift rotation and their break.

Antok is no longer smiling, when they walk away. "Chatty, weren't they?"

Kolivan grunts. He has not come here to make friends or form bonds, and if Antok has been moved around as much as he says, then he hasn't either. So why, then, is he trying to?

::::

Kolivan is stern, but not inhumane. Antok knows he's rattled when one of the female Galra under their charge can no longer hide the symptoms of pregnancy. She's killed and her unborn child is cut out and thrown to be eaten by the animals that prowl the gladiator rings when prisoner against prisoner fights grow too dull for the higher ups that are allowed to watch. He grunts less when Antok resumes his usual place with that night at the end of the hall after a lavatory break. Kolivan's stony expression has been harder all day, like flint.

Antok wonders if he can convince him to start a fire. "She was a Blade, you know. I checked the records. They confiscated her knife when she was captured and brought here."

"She's a Galra who turned on her own kind." Kolivan's voice doesn't sound as sharp as he wants it to. "Of course she's a rebel."

"The Blades and rebels are different. One are organized, and old. The other is disparate and desperate. Have you ever fought one of either?"

Kolivan glares at him. "No."

"If you do, you will know the difference." Antok spares him a side glance. Chooses his words carefully. "And know that things could be different, in the galaxy."

The implication is enough, and Kolivan's eyes widen, immediately calculating. "You—"

Antok keeps his face calm, and confident. "Prove it."

Kolivan watches him for a moment longer, as though trying to piece him together - or tear him apart - before he walks down the end of the hall. He does not come back for the rest of the night, which is strictly against protocol. Antok does not report him, does not do anything but convince himself that he didn't push too far, that he won't be dragged into the female Galra's now empty cell to rot there instead.

Kolivan avoids him in the morning, and in the evening—their monthly night off—he comes to Antok's private bunk, and sits down. "Tell me."

So he does.

::::

When Kolivan joins the Blades, his siblings follow. The House of Maala is old and respected, a well to do family of Yuraks that has a long line of generals. Kolivan's parents are happy and retired—and ignorant, so terribly ignorant, of the activities their children are getting up to. Not that their children are children anymore, but are grown Galra, all either finished or entering their mandatory military training, before their mandatory service. (At the time of his defection, Kolivan's was nearly complete.)

Kolivan is twenty-five, Orilla twenty, and Thace just eighteen years old.

Orilla shoots first and asks questions later, is bad at taking orders, and never lets others in on her plans. _Shut up and trust me!_ She's quick and efficient in solo work and reports back with bloody smiles. Thace is the one who patches her up, and trails after her like a lost yupper, but Antok knows Kolivan is the one he idealizes. Thace is far too soft to ever be like his brother—Kolivan was the one who lived up to the family name, primed to be a General if he hadn't applied for a leave of absence—but he's a good medic, and good at intel work.

Either way, Antok vows Kolivan won't lose his family the way Antok lost his.

(Later, he's half right: one younger sibling comes back, jarred and jaded but still not angry, and the other doesn't come back at all.)

::::

Kolivan doesn't like being on missions with Antok, but the Commander of the Blades, a scarred _Tzarak_ with eyes like flint named Krzel, says they work well together. Caste hierarchies don't matter in the Blades, but Kolivan wouldn't dare challenge her regardless. And so Kolivan lets her send him and Antok to Mandilor, to desert moons, and moored Galra cruisers. Sometimes they're stationed as bunkmates. Other times, they don't see each other for weeks despite being in the same squadron, and Kolivan waits, a few seconds early at their rendezvous point, for his partner to show up. It's the only times on missions that Kolivan truly feels _anxious_.

Passing the Trials had been easy for Kolivan. The bots, the maze, even his duel with Krzel, he'd managed a good five minutes longer than the necessary time limit. The hologram had been terrifying in its own right—what would happen to his parents if his treachery was found out—but he'd pushed through. His parents would never understand. But if they had to die for the Empire to be brought down, for the violence unleashed upon the galaxy to end, it was his burden to bear.

Knowledge or death. Rationality over emotions. Sacrifice over selfishness.

 _Knowledge or death_.

The first time Kolivan has to leave a mission without Antok, it's on a desert moon in a tiny shuttle with sand filling the cracks. Their cover had been blown. Antok hadn't shown up at the rendezvous point. Kolivan had to keep going—and he had. It hadn't changed the squelch of his get, as though he'd been shot, when he'd had to close the doors and know he couldn't go back for the closest thing he had to a friend. The grit that had settled over his shoulders.

Losing Antok is a blow. They're not friends, Kolivan convinces himself. But he knew how Antok worked. Knew he was patient and gruff and obedient (as obedient as any Blade could be, anyway). He softened Kolivan's sharpest edges. Was hard working. Kolivan knew he could rely on him. But not now.

Until it becomes clear that Antok must've been blessed by Dylak (not that Kolivan set much stock in gods) because he'd lived, and kept living. Kept coming back. Kolivan didn't want to itch him away. Got used to seeing his face, a smooth, pale purple with soft _Tzarak_ ridges along his brow and a _Kyrak_ tail. To his impassioned but faithful demeanour.

Until the Antok doesn't come back, though, and Kolivan is left standing in the sudden chasm left behind.

::::

Blades end up in the arenas, and they never last long. If there's one thing higher military nuts love beyond bloodshed is the blood of traitors being spilt on the floor. Antok counts the days and etches tallies into the walls of his cell in between matches with a single claw. There will be no rescue mission. That's not how the Blades work. He knows this; he's always known this.

It doesn't make him feel any less hollow.

Three weeks later, he is the last Blade he knows of who's survived, and his quadrant of the prison is bombed. The suspension of the explosion catches his face in the fire, charred and bits of shrapnel. He drags himself from the wreck and steals a shuttle in the chaos along with two other prisoners. One is gunned down on the way to the ship, and another dies from blood loss in the back of the shuttle once they get the turbines working.

He finds the nearest Blade base and gets flagged down. His life is saved but not his face.

Krzel doesn't scold him once he gets back to headquarters, merely adjusts his gauze and claps him on the shoulder. _It's good to have you back_.

Kolivan is waiting for him in the medbay. His eyes are like stones under stormy water. He grips Antok's arm, steadies and guides him onto a cot. _Welcome home._

Antok squeezes his arm. Somehow, he knows that Kolivan led the bomb strike, volunteered a way to get him out. How else would he know Antok was arriving at the base? Even typical mission partners were not told of one another's separate operations. But home, here. Maybe it is.

He lets Kolivan be the last one to see his new face before he fits his mask over it, largely for good.

(After that, Antok only removes his mask in front of him. Kolivan never flinches. His gaze is comforting. And then, much later, so are his lips.)

::::

Kolivan knows Antok is angry, because he presses the disinfectant pad a bit more firmly against Kolivan's brow then he needs to. Antok only tsks when he winces, and presses on. "You need to be more careful," Antok says. "You could've lost your eye."

Kolivan's new scar is bold, jutting from his brow, over his eyelid and down his cheek. A permanent mark. "I'm fine," Kolivan says gravelly. The mission hadn't gone quite right, but he'd gotten the intel he needed, so why is Antok upset?

"And you say I'm the reckless one," Antok mutters, and Kolivan snorts.

"You are."

"Shut up and let me finish." And, dutifully, Kolivan does fall silent and lets Antok finish. The medics could do this of course, but Antok is warm—part of his mother's non-Galra heritage from an ice moon near the Outer Rim of the Empire—and the injury is small enough the medics don't have time to concern themselves with it. Antok always does, and Kolivan has patched him up a far few times too. "Krzel needs us on the bridge in an hour. Something about your brother bringing home a new recruit. Someone from the Astero family, I think."

"Promising?"

"Regris didn't sound happy when he delivered the news."

"Regris is never happy."

Antok softens. "Neither are you."

"Not true," Kolivan grunts. His eyes shift. Rest on Antok. "I'm happy around you, sometimes."

His mask is on, but Kolivan can still hear the smile in his partner's voice. "Show it more often then."

::::

Kolivan comes back for him. They're thirty-three and the base has been compromised. Krzel has stayed behind to hold off the Galra fighters. Gave them orders to get as many people out as possible, to keep the blade trackers out of enemy hands, to charge up the shuttles and grab the most important documents, get their medics and scientists out. (Kolivan takes Thace's work on pockets of space time. Perhaps it can be used to ensure another base is not found like this one was ever again.)

Kolivan comes back for him. The ceiling is collapsing and the shuttles were gone. He's stranded out in the hallway, limping. He's passed along his information to others—knowledge before death—and knows he has and is nothing, now. Nothing of value.

Kolivan comes back for him. Hoists him onto sturdier shoulders, helps him hobble to the nearest shuttle, and buckles him in. Picks up the controls and flies them somewhere safe, an old abandoned base on a small forest planet set in a warm, blooming season. Finds an inn and pays with the few credits they have, and—

Kolivan comes back for him, and that night Antok makes him come. Their first kiss, once they're alone and settled with nothing to do but wait and grieve and think, is a brief meeting of lips. Their second is harsh and hungry, and then retreating and gentle, as gentle as either of them have ever been. They shed clothes and armour and scars and make love, lungs groaning and hands grasping. It's clear that it's neither of their first times, but it hardly matters.

Afterwards, they lie swathed in sheets and each other's arms. Antok brushes his lips over Kolivan's scar, his tail curling around their ankles. Kolivan sucks on his scarred bottom lip in a way that only lovers do.

"Antok," he says. His eyes have never looked so bright. There's something guarded, still alert, but it's the closest Antok has ever seen him come to looking blissful.

Antok's voice softens as he responds. " _Arlan_."

It's the Galra word for beloved. For chosen one, twin star, life partner. A hard lump burns in his throat when Kolivan stays silent. Perhaps he has read too much into this. He has never called someone _arlan_ before, and the Blades—whoever the new commander is, now that Krzel has fallen—certainly won't approve where she might've let it slide. All of it is a bad idea. A breach of the Blade of Marmora's code.

And then Kolivan lowers his head and kisses him on the mouth, achingly soft, and cups his cheek with calloused, war-torn hands, and murmurs it back in between kisses, over and over until it is sound only.

In the morning, Kolivan's usual stature comes back. Antok does not beget him for it.

Kolivan came back for him. That says enough.

(And when they are alone, and Kolivan knows how to be soft, _arlan_ passes from his lips to his lover with ease.)

::::

Kzrel's will leaves Kolivan as her successor. It is a natural piece of the puzzle that Antok becomes Kolivan's right hand man. Listens to him plot and rage and eases his temper. Knows that if Kolivan had to pick between him and the good of the universe, he'd pick the universe, and Antok has peace with it, only because he knows Kolivan would pick the universe over his own personal happiness every time as well—and between missions and weary years and soft sheets, Antok has come to know that he and Kolivan's happiness are more or less the same thing.

When it becomes clear that Thace and a _Kyrak_ , Ulaz, harbour feelings for each other, Kolivan does not begrudge them too harshly. They do not wish to touch each other the way he and Antok do—Thace has never had the inclination for it, and Antok does not know Ulaz well enough to judge, but never once had he seen them sneaking around Blade barracks for a bit of pleasure the way the others had—and that while Kolivan keeps their relationship under wraps ("The Galra cannot know our weaknesses," he'd said firmly of it, one night in bed) he cannot hide it from everyone, much less his brother. The lacklustre quality of his reprimand, Antok knows, drives his mad.

When Lira Astero, skinny and orphaned at ten years old and Ulaz's niece, is brought to the Blades, Thace becomes like another father to her. Antok oversees her training sometimes, the way Ulaz or Thace will advise the stretch of her arm when she strikes, the one moon cycle she falls sick and Thace helps take care of her. Ulaz braids her hair before she cuts it off, and both worry when she is prepped for the Trials at fourteen. Antok watches them and sees a family, and looks at Kolivan and sees a shadow.

Antok is a practical man. He knows he has much more than he arguably deserves. He and Kolivan will never be bound together, never have a house or children. He does not know if he would want the latter if it was even an option. But not having the option, in the moments he remembers and indulges and imagines, dampen his mood. It is those nights Kolivan is gentle with him, hands tracing his sides, lips kissing his scars.

Antok tries not to look of the impermanence of their lives. That one day, they will fall.

He just hopes that when the time comes, they will fall together, like they always have.


	2. we all need someone to stay (lirance)

(we all need) someone to stay

 **Summary:** Missing scene from "Chapter Seventeen: The House of Maala." Lira and Lance's goodbye.

::::

"Lira! Wait up!"

Lira turns her head and hears Lance jogging to catch up with her—she'd walked briskly once Kolivan had adjourned the meeting—but she doesn't stop. She'd been strong and steady back there, enough to fool Kolivan, or at least enough for him to agree to her idea, but fear is swelling up hot and fast in her throat now, and she thinks she might cry, and she does not want to cry in front of a Paladin of Voltron, even if it is Lance.

She thinks she's going to outpace him, feign a busy mind as an excuse, when his hand latches onto her wrist and wheels her back towards him. His eyes are wide and searching her face. She wishes she had her mask on, and then wrenches her arm around of his grasp. " _What,_ Lance?" she demands, half growling.

He shrinks backwards, but the strange determination in his eyes only grows stronger. "I just... wanted to make sure you were okay. You seemed pretty upset leaving and well, you're going on a pretty big mission." He shrugs. Gives her a smile she almost wants to call sweet. "I wanted to say goodbye."

Her eyes harden. "Galra don't say goodbye," she says, and turns so she doesn't have to see the shattered look on his face. She can remember when Ulaz had been sent to Zarkon's central command, and the fear hot and tight in her gut. She'd come back to Base-101 and Kolivan had told her Ulaz was already gone, and that Thace hadn't come back from his latest mission yet either.

Lance curves and stops in front of her. "Well neither do Paladins of Voltron," he says stoutly, and sighs when she doesn't waver. "Look, you must need a place to prep for your mission, right? Somewhere private?"

"Uh—" Blades are not thoughtful, either. She thought she'd go sharpen her knife, maybe try to get some sleep. She'll need paint, for her markings. She can get that from the shuttle Kolivan and some of their brethren touched down in. But she does not want to be disturbed, and knows that everything will be leaving the Olkari base behind for the Castleship. It'll be crowded, and noisy. This time it's her turn to sigh. "Yeah," she says slowly. "I do."

Lance tilts his shoulder to the right. "C'mon. You can use the Blue Lion's hangar."

She softens, despite herself, as she follows him down the hall and towards the Castleship. They step into the hangar, and find the Blue Lion looming, tall and proud, and Lance seems to breathe more deeply now that he's closer to his Lion.

"No one will bother you there," Lance says confidently, his hands in the pocket of his strange 'jacket.'

"Not even you?" she teases.

However much his expression had lifted when she'd left with him fades. "I'm not that much of a bother to you, am I?" he asks quietly,

Lira swallows. "No, I just—you are the most determined of the paladins, is all. To know me. I am unused to it."

Lance rubs the back of his neck. "Well, yeah," he says. She has never heard him talk so slowly. She has never seen a human's cheesk turn red before. "You're cool."

Her brows knit together. "I am cold?"

Lance laughs, clear and bright. "It's an Earthling term. It means, uh, that you can do things I've never seen anyone else do. Things that maybe nobody else can. Like how Shiro fights, or when Keith flies his Lion through an asteroid belt, or Hunk and Pidge with their tech. Even Allura's powers. They're all pretty cool."

"But you are not?" she says.

"Well, no," says Lance. He seems a different sort of embarrassed now, she realizes. "Not really."

"Hmm."

Lira doesn't know why she indulges him, as she strides to the work table. She sets down her Blade and her knife. For the next ten vargas, she should try and get some sleep. She'll find some black bandages from Kolivan's ship. He may not partake in the rituals anymore himself—there is no time in a rebellion—but he'll give her the tools she needs.

She holds her mask in her hands. "I disagree," she says at last, looking back at him. "You're quite the sniper, and pilot. Your bond with your Lion is strong. And..."

She thinks back to the past few months, of whenever she'd been able to touch down on Olkarion. It hadn't been often, but the paladins had always greeted her. Always been kind. They hadn't understood the danger of having friends in wartime, but perhaps Voltron itself made friendship necessary. The others had come and gone when her ship arrived, Kolivan having kept Shiro and Allura up to tabs—and she still isn't sure what to make of that, exactly—of her whereabouts. Sometimes Pidge was at the market with Elyta, or Hunk preparing a meal with Shay, or Keith sparring alone, or Shiro and Allura wrapped up in their planning, but Lance had always been there, and he'd always brought the others back to her eventually, one way or another.

"You're the only one I've seen who can make any member of your team smile," Lira finishes. "Teams need that, in wartime."

Lance slowly smiles at her. "That sounds more _heartwarming_ than _cool,_ " he says pointedly, but he sounds pleased with himself.

"You humans have too many temperatures," she says, with a disapproving _tsk_ in the back of her throat. "Just take the compliment, Paladin."

Lance holds up his hands. That same sweet, stupid smile is on his face. "Fine. Thank you."

She slides her Blade back into its sheath. "I'll be leaving before you do," she says. "For my mission."

"Oh." Lance steps closer, but her back is still to him. "How much earlier?"

"I don't know," she admits. Kolivan will give her the information when it comes through. Of how fast one of the Blade's sleeker shuttles will go in more open space, how small it will have to be to avoid detection by central command's surveillance. "It may only be by one varga, or five." She looks back down at her mask. "I may not see you again before I leave."

 _Or ever,_ but she pushes that dark thought away.

Lance's hand finds her wrist again. "Be careful, Lira."

She turns her head slightly. "I will," she promises, and then he lets go.

She's just glad, later when he's left and she returns with the black bandages, that she knows Team Voltron will look after their most valuable member for her.


End file.
